1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing method of interfacing a three-dimensional (3D) image and a camera image in a mobile device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cameras with several hundred thousand to several million pixels tend to be built in mobile devices that are represented by a mobile phone. Various kinds of mobile devices with various functions are commercially available. Examples of the mobile devices are mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), smart phone, portable multimedia player (PMP), and MP3 player. Using the cameras built in the mobile devices, an image can be directly acquired and the acquired image can be stored in the device and can also be transmitted or edited.
In mobile device markets, generalization of various kinds of mobile devices with built-in cameras is in progress. At the same time, various applications using the mobile devices have been developed and released. The mobile devices and the applications support a function of acquiring photograph or moving picture, a function of transmitting the acquired photograph or moving picture to a PC or another mobile device and storing it, a function of editing and searching the photograph or moving picture, and a function of transmitting the photograph or moving picture to a personal homepage or Blog in Internet site and displaying it.
In the mobile device, an image processing makes it possible to acquire an image by means of the camera and display a 2D or 3D graphic image. A representative application using the 3D display function is a 3D game. The 3D game has been introduced as a new trend in game markets of the mobile device, which have been limited to two-dimension.
The interface of an existing camera and a 3D image system has been performed in a PC or arcade game system. For example, a motion of a gamer (user) is traced by an inter-frame image flow in a user image inputted by the camera. A response suitable for the 3D graphic image based on an estimation result of the user's motion is applied. In this manner, the user can enjoy the 3D game.
In the existing PC or arcade game system, the interface between the camera image and the 3D graphic engine requires complicated operations, including an analysis of an image in each frame, a calculation and matching of the motion, and so on. For this reason, it is very inefficient to directly apply the interface system to the mobile device having a relatively low performance processor compared with the PC or arcade game system. In addition, if concurrently using a 3D display having a relatively large amount of calculation compared with a 2D image, a real-time display and interaction cannot be secured and thus the application may be greatly limited.
In order to use the interface system in the mobile device, a solution having a simpler and faster response has to be developed. Therefore, there is a demand for a processing system that can interface the camera image and the 3D graphic engine in the mobile device having the camera and the 3D graphic engine mounted thereon.